“Pyre?”
“And now I reckon Doug and Bee will have to take on those poor children,” she told Ian.
Ian said, “Well, actually—”
“Just look at that little one. Did you ever see anything so precious?”
Ian followed her gaze. In the doorway to the hall, Daphne stood rocking unsteadily. Her dazzling white shoes — hard-soled and ankle-high — no doubt helped to keep her upright; but still, standing alone at ten months was quite an accomplishment, Ian suspected. Was this the first time she’d tried it? He thought of all the fuss that would have been made ordinarily — the applause and the calls for a camera. But Daphne went unnoticed, a frail, wispy waif in an oversized dress, looking anxiously from face to face.
Then she spotted Ian. Her eyes widened. She grinned. She dropped to the floor and scuttled toward him, expertly weaving between the grownups’ legs and pausing every now and then to wrench herself free from the hem of her dress. She arrived at his feet, took hold of his trousers and hauled herself to a standing position. When she beamed up at him, she had to tip her head so far back she nearly fell over.
Ian bent and lifted her into his arms. She nestled against his shoulder. “Oh, the darling,” Mrs. Jordan said. “Why, she’s crazy about you! Isn’t she, Ian? Isn’t she? Ian?”
He couldn’t explain why the radiance left over from church fell away so suddenly. The air in the room seemed dull and brownish. Mrs. Jordan’s voice sounded hollow. This child was far too heavy.
Back in school, he kept trying to recapture that feeling he’d had at the funeral. He hummed “Abide with Me” under his breath. He closed his eyes in hopes of summoning up the congregation’s single, melting voice, the soft light from the pebbled windows, the sense of mercy and forgiveness. But nothing came. The bland brick atmosphere of Sumner College prevailed. Biology 101 progressed from nematodes to frogs, and King John repudiated the Magna Carta, and Ian’s roommate dragged him to see Devil-Women from Outer Space.
At night, Danny stood at the blackboard in front of Ian’s English class. “This is a dream,” he announced. “The word ‘dream’ comes from the Latin word dorimus, meaning ‘game of chance.’ ” Ian awoke convinced that there had been some message in this, but the harder he worked to decipher it, the farther away it drifted.
He phoned home Saturday afternoon and learned that Mrs. Jordan, of all people, had cleverly uncovered the name of Lucy’s ex-husband. “What she did,” Bee told Ian, “was sit Agatha down beside her and run through a lot of everyday, wife-ish remarks. She said, ‘Don’t forget the garbage,’ and, ‘Suppertime!’ and, ‘You’re late.’ Her theory was, the name would sort of swim into Agatha’s memory. She thought Thomas was too young to try it on. But all at once Thomas pipes up, ‘You’re late with the check again, Tom!’ he said. Just out of nowhere!”
“Well, that would make sense,” Ian said. “So Thomas must be Tom Junior.”
“I said to Jessie Jordan, I said, ‘Jessie,’ I said, ‘you’re amazing.’ Really I don’t know what I’d have done without her, these past few days. Or any of the neighbors. They’ve all been so helpful, running errands for me and taking the children when my legs are bad …”
What she was saying, it seemed to Ian, was, “See what you’ve gone and done? See how you’ve ruined our lives?” Although of course she didn’t mean that at all. She went on to say the Cahns, next door, had lent her their sitter, and the foreigners had brought over a pot of noodle soup with an aftertaste resembling throw-up. “People have been just lovely,” she said, “and Cicely’s mother called to say—”
“But what about Thomas Senior?” Ian broke in.
“What about him?”
“Did you look for him in the Cheyenne phone book?”
“Oh, we’d already called all the Deans in Cheyenne, but now we have a name to give the officials. They ought to be able to track something down — driver’s license, marriage license … I remember Lucy said once he’d remarried.”
That night Ian dreamed that Lucy sat in her living room among bushel baskets of mail — letters and fliers and magazines. Then Danny walked in and said, “Lucy? What is this?”
“Oh,” she said, “I just can’t open them anymore. Since you died it seems I haven’t had the heart.”
“But this is terrible!” he cried. “Your bulks and your flats I could understand, but first-class, Lucy! First-class envelopes lying untouched!”
“Then talk to Ian,” she said in a wiry, tight voice.
“Ian?”
“Ian says I’m not a bit first-class,” she said, and her mouth turned down at the corners, petulant and spiteful looking.
Ian awoke and blinked at the crack of light beneath the door. Winston was snoring. Someone’s radio was playing. He heard the scrape of a chair down the hall and carefree, unthinking laughter.
Sunday morning he rode into town on the college’s little blue church bus. Most of the passengers were students he’d never laid eyes on before, although he did recognize his lab partner, dressed in a hard-surfaced, voluminous gray coat. He pretended not to see her and proceeded toward the long seat at the rear, where he settled between two boys with haircuts so short and suits so tidy that they might have stepped out of the 1950s. Really this was a sort of losers’ bus, he realized, and he had an impulse to jump off while he still could. But then the senior class secretary boarded — a poised, attractive girl — and he felt reassured. He rode through the stubbled farmlands with his eyes fixed straight ahead, while the boy on his left fingered a rosary and the boy on his right whispered over a Bible.
At the courthouse square in Sumner, the bus stopped and everyone disembarked. Ian chose to follow the largest group of students, which included the senior class secretary and also a relatively normal-looking freshman named Eddie something whom he’d seen around the dorm. He and Eddie fell into step together, and Eddie said, “You on your way to Leeds Memorial?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so.”
Eddie nodded. “It’s not too bad,” he said. “I go every week on account of my grandmother’s paying me.”
“Paying you?”
“If I don’t miss a Sunday all year I get a check for a hundred bucks.”
“Gosh,” Ian said.
Leeds Memorial was a stately brick building with a white interior and dark, varnished pews. The choir sounded professional, and they sang the opening hymn on their own while the congregation stayed seated. Maybe that was why Ian didn’t have much feeling about it. It was only music, that was all — something unfamiliar, classical-sounding, flawlessly performed. Maybe the whole church had to be singing along.
The theme of the day was harvest, because they were drawing close to Thanksgiving. The Bible reading referred to the reaping of grain, and the sermon had to do with resting after one’s labors. The pastor — a slouching, easygoing, just-one-of-the-guys type with a sweater vest showing beneath his suit coat — counseled his listeners to be kind to themselves, to take time for themselves in the midst of the hurly-burly. Ian felt enormous yawns hollowing the back of his throat. Finally the organist began thrumming out a series of chords, and the sermon came to an end and everyone rose. The hymn was “Bringing in the Sheaves.” It was a simpleminded, seesawing sort of tune, Ian felt, and the collective voice of the congregation had a note of fluty gentility, as if dominated by the dressed-up old ladies lining the pews.
Walking back to the bus, Eddie asked if he’d be coming every Sunday.
Ian said he doubted it.
His Thanksgiving vacation was fractious and disorganized; Lucy’s children had still not been claimed. By now they had moved in upon the household in full force. Their toys littered the living room, their boats and ducks crowded the bathroom, and Daphne’s real crib — much larger than the Port-a-Crib — cramped his bedroom. He was alarmed at how haggard his mother looked, and how heavy and big-bellied. The waistband of her slacks was extended with one of those oversized safety pins women once decorated their kilts with. And the holiday dinner she served was halfhearted — no hors d’oeuvres, not even beforehand, and the turkey unstuffed and the pies store-bought. Even the company seemed lacking. Claudia snapped at her children, Macy kept drifting away from the table to watch a football game on TV, and the foreigners had to leave before dessert in order to meet the plane of a new arrival. All in all, it was a relief to have the meal over with.